Patios in Iwerne Minster

Edges are structure, not trim. A patio with nothing holding it in will spread at the open side and the joints will open with it. Edging is bedded and haunched in concrete, a coping caps a low retaining wall, and a kerb line separates paving from lawn. On a plot that steps, the retaining is designed first and the paving follows it.

Working next to an old wall. A nineteenth century garden wall often sits on very little, so we do not dig a deep formation tight against its base and hope. The excavation is kept back or stepped, we do not bed paving hard into the fabric, and a gravel border between the wall and the slabs keeps splash off soft brick and flint while giving the falls somewhere to shed.

The dig. Old concrete, sunken flags, brick paviours, a raised bed built off the wall, roots and made ground come out first. We excavate to firm formation and the spoil is loaded to a grab lorry or a skip and leaves with us.

The sub base. Geotextile separator over soft ground, then MOT Type 1 in compacted layers of about 100mm rather than one deep lift given a single pass. That is the difference between a terrace that stays flat and one rocking within a few winters.

Porcelain and stone. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain is dense, takes almost no water and in a riven finish sits comfortably beside old brick. It goes on a full bed of mortar over a slurry primed back, never dabs. Sandstone is warm and forgiving but porous and greens in shade; limestone is quieter and marks with iron; granite is the hardest and the least likely to move; travertine is a poor choice for a Dorset winter. Hand cut stone varies in thickness so the bed levels it, calibrated stone is sawn to one depth.

Falls, levels and the damp course. The paving falls away from the building and finishes two courses below the DPC where the garden allows, as Approved Document C sets out. Water goes to a gully proved to run, a soakaway where the ground takes it, or a permeable build so the runoff stays on your own ground.

Jointing. Stone is hand pointed in a mortar matched to it, or given a brush in compound worked into a full joint; porcelain takes a grout made for dense units. Along a wall line, where the water concentrates, a short joint is always the first thing to go.

Repairs. Rebuilding a failed retaining edge, re-bedding rocking slabs, replacing cracked units, renewing washed out jointing and correcting falls on a terrace that ponds.

Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: excavation and muck away, the sub base, the falls and where water goes, edgings and steps, the slabs themselves, and jointing on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Iwerne Minster has its own conservation area and around forty listed entries in the parish, so a boundary wall taken down or rebuilt, anything visible from the road, and work to trees are separate questions from a terrace behind the house. Dorset Council keeps the record of what is designated and the Planning Portal covers walls and gates.

Ring rather than use the form. A slab that has lifted at one corner or a step that has dropped is a trip, and a north facing patio in winter can be genuinely dangerous. We can usually lift and re-lay the worst of it quickly, then look properly at whether the base under the rest has gone. If a retaining edge or a sleeper wall has started to lean, ring rather than wait, because what is behind it keeps pushing. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

The garden walls in this village are frequently the oldest thing on the plot, built in brick and flint with a lime mortar and very often standing on a shallow footing or none at all. They are also what makes the gardens look the way they do, and they are far more expensive to rebuild than to work around.

For a patio that has two consequences. A deep excavation right against the base of an old wall takes away the ground supporting it, and walls have come down that way. And bedding paving hard against the brickwork traps water at the base of a wall that was built to dry out through its face, which brings on the frost damage and the crumbling mortar you can see on plenty of them already.

So we design the patio to stop short of the wall. The excavation is stepped or held back, a stone margin or a narrow border sits between the slabs and the brickwork, and where a level change is wanted the retaining is built as its own structure rather than leaning the load onto something Victorian. Where a wall is shared with a neighbour, the party wall rules are worth reading before work starts. It costs a little more in setting out and it saves the wall.

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